293: i
| i |
 Made by: Tom Field+Jonathan Sandman |
Explanation[edit | edit source]
In the original strip... wait, 404 Not Found? Let's check the date again. That's right, the author(s) gave us a date of February 29 during a standard year, i.e., one in which February only has 28 days. As this date doesn't exist in our system, so too, the author claimed, are square roots of a negative number. Here's why.
For any real number n, n² is nonnegative. This is because, when you square a number, you're always multiplying two numbers with the same sign, and if that number isn't 0, you always get a positive number. To get a negative number from squaring, you have to use imaginary numbers.
To represent an imaginary comic, the author(s), in addition to giving an invalid date, made the strip completely transparent.
For a more comprehensive explanation of imaginary numbers, click this link.
The author writes:[edit | edit source]
What is the square root of a minus number? It doesn't exist*. So this is a nonexistant comic. Yeah.
Original strip: 0000-00-00.
- Footnote added by site admin, because I know someone will complain if I don't: At least not in the real numbers.
Transcript[edit | edit source]
{A totally transparent image the size of a Garfield comic strip}
Trivia[edit | edit source]
The alleged date of the "original strip" was originally programmed as the non-existent date 1999-02-29; that date is non-existent because only leap years have a February 29, and 1999 was not a leap year. Changes to the workings of the Square Root of Minus Garfield site have broken the logic behind the original joke and instead render the "original strip"'s alleged date as the equally non-existent 0000-00-00 (one of two strips still crediting that date after a number of other strips bearing that error had it corrected, the other being 5195: Still Garf And Roll To Me); that date is itself non-existent because the year 0 does not exist in most civil calendar systems, including the Gregorian calendar currently in usage in most of the world and the Julian calendar that preceded it and was in usage during the year 1 BCE, the year that in reality preceded the year AD 1.
